NGOs a No-Go at the WSF?

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3 February 2007

There are some more reflections coming out about the recent World
Social Forum. South Africa-based scholar activist Patrick Bond does a nice roundup of some of these and provides some further analysis about the various opinions about what is needed for the Forum’s future.

Quite a few people cite the perceived dominance of well-funded
largely Northern NGOs at the Forum and the tensions between NGOs and
social movements as being one of the major issues of this year’s WSF.
The dramatic contrast between well-resourced Northern aid agencies
flying in dozens of delegates (wearing said aid agency’s t-shirts and
bling) to attend their own workshops, and the Kenyan poor who couldn’t
even afford to get in (let alone eat, or buy said agency’s t-shirts)
was a stark reminder of the disparity within the ‘global justice
movement’ itself.

‘Many locals were simply denied access originally, because
they were too poor to pay the registration fee. Others from further
away were unable to fork out the travel costs and local expenses.
Instead, the dominance of worldwide operating NGOs (including
foundations of political parties, the trade unions and the churches) as
well as representatives of other institutions more or less directly
linked to state agencies played a visibly dominant role and illustrated
the obvious dividing lines between grassroots activists, scholars and
other professionally concerned “do gooders” from different spheres and
social backgrounds.’

‘A greater diversity of people(s) can now be seen to lay claim
to differing senses of experience and ownership over the WSF process
and one great challenge for those involved in their own movements is to
express alternatives by addressing the drastic social inequalities and
discrepant privileges that exist in and between participants. It is of
great importance that the Forum does not again repeat the reproduction
of capitalist relations that made conditions very difficult for those
from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds to both participate on
equal footing and exercise their voices in an equal manner to those who
came from Northern countries or who had the capacity to self organize
events.’

‘This event had all the features of a trade fair – those with
greater wealth had more events in the calendar, larger (and more
comfortable) spaces, more propaganda – and therefore a larger voice.
Thus the usual gaggle of quasi donor/International NGOs claimed a
greater presence than national organizations – not because what they
had to say was more important or more relevant to the theme of the WSF,
but because, essentially, they had greater budgets at their command.
Thus the WSF was not immune from the laws of (neoliberal) market
forces. There was no leveling of the playing field. This was more a
World NGO Forum than an anti-capitalist mobilization, lightly peppered
with social activists and grassroots movements.’

‘In that sense it should worry us that the African
participation in the first ever WSF in Africa, in Nairobi, is more of a
gathering of NGOs than that of the real social and political movements
and peoples' organizations who can make lasting change possible. Many
of our successful NGOs and INGOs, like their forebears, have become
gatekeepers - or to use a better term - commissioned agents between the
masses and their oppressors, occupying spaces for the poor and the
marginalized when most of them do not or no longer belong to that class
or share their vision of change.’ Abdul-Raheem earlier asks: ‘How come
the nationalists freed this continent from the yoke of colonialism
without writing proposals to any funder?’

Action Aid’s International Policy Coordinator, Eric Gutierrez, takes issue
with Abdul-Raheem’s assertions. He writes: ‘My bottom line is, please,
let us not go to the extent of denying the value of solidarity. When
proposals become too cumbersome and have turned instead into mechanisms
for manipulation, then by all means, let us challenge it.’

Which is just what the Assembly of Social Movements at the Forum
sought to do, with some worried about NGOs promoting a ‘neoliberalism
from below’. There was also concern about the presence of church groups
and conservative organizations. A statement
released at the Assembly denounced groups present who were said to be
‘working against the rights of women, marginalized people, and against
sexual rights and diversity, in contradiction to the WSF Charter of
Principles.’

Some people found the debate to be too partisan. One participant found the role of NGOs at the Forum ‘somewhat irrelevant’ and wondered instead why there was so little discussion about direct action?:

‘They [NGOs] had the majority of stalls with literature to be
sure, but the workshops that I attended were much more likely to be
dominated by academics or activists than NGO activists. I simply chose
non-NGO workshops. One thing that was striking in its absence however,
was any discussion of direct action, even in most of the social
movement-y sessions. It wasn’t until I had gone downtown to the local
and free “People’s Parliament” and heard a mill worker activist from
Mumbai talk that I realized what was missing. He told a gripping story
about an action by mill workers who had been locked out without
backpay. Facing the police, 1500 workers doused themselves in what
appeared to be petrol, and held up matchbooks. The police panicked, got
a local governor to negotiate and received their wages (and I believe
their jobs). It turns out that what appeared to be petrol, was only
water. When I compared the response of the audience to this story to
the gloomy faces watching a “Save the Children” video, I definitely
knew I wanted to stick to the social movement sessions.’

This isn’t the first WSF where these issues came to a head, and no doubt the debate will continue. As New Internationalist co-editor David Ransom writes last year in our special issue on NGOs:
‘As soon as organizations, like people, lose the ability to recognize
or repair their own flaws then their useful life is limited. The same
could even apply to a superpower, as recent events in New Orleans seem
to illustrate. It may be vexing, but one’s best friends are often one’s
sharpest critics. And that, needless to say, really does apply equally
well to us.’

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